The vehicle seats of a typical passenger vehicle are not suitable for young children as they are manufactured to fit adults.
Therefore, vehicles are equipped with a separate car seat apparatus for young children that fits young children, in order to ensure comfort of the young children while the vehicle is operated.
A typical car seat apparatus for young children includes a seat portion and a back portion. The position of the seat portion installed on a seat in the vehicle is definitely higher than that of the vehicle seat.
As a result, the feet of a young child sitting on the car seat apparatus for young children do not reach the floor but are hung in the air.
If the feet of the young child do not reach the floor, the weight of a portion of the legs that is hung in the air is concentrated on the thighs of the young child, which support the portion. As a result, the young children feel uncomfortable as the legs become numb.
In the related art, there have been developed various types of footrest assemblies of car seat apparatuses for young children including the invention of Patent Document 1.
For the conventional art including Patent Document 1, installation is mostly based on a base plate interposed between a vehicle seat and the car seat apparatus for young children.
Generally, the base plate according to the above-described prior art has a non-slip portion formed on the upper or lower surface thereof to correspond to the lower surface of the car seat apparatus for young children and the upper surface of the vehicle seat and to prevent slippage.
However, since the vehicle seat is a fixed structure of the vehicle body, and the car seat apparatus for young children is fixed by a means such as a seatbelt provided on the vehicle seat, the car seat apparatus can be moved forward with respect to the normal position of the vehicle seat or be misaligned with the front-rear direction of the vehicle when sudden physical force acts on the vehicle such as in the case of sudden stop, sudden turn or collision.
At this time, the footrest assembly may be misaligned with the car seat apparatus for young children, which may result in imbalance in posture of the young child as well as discomfort due to non-uniform support of the feet of the young child.
In addition, the footrest assembly of the conventional car seat apparatuses for young children does not have a means to put the footrest assembly in correct alignment with the car seat apparatuses for young children which come in various sizes. Therefore, in order to correct misalignment between the footrest assembly and the car seat apparatus for young children, an adjustment operation including an operation of lifting the car seat apparatus several times and an operation of aligning the car seat apparatus is required.